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Textual Traditions and Religious Identities in the Pāñcarātra Robert Leach Submitted for the degree of PhD by Research The University of Edinburgh 2012 1 I have read and understood the University of Edinburgh guidelines on plagiarism. This thesis was composed by me and is entirely my own work except where I indicate otherwise by use of quotes and references. No part of it has been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. 2 Abstract In this thesis I provide a study of the distinct traditions within the Pāñcarātra, concentrating especially on the ways in which these traditions’ identities were formed by their textual allegiances. In Chapter One, I show that the so-called “three jewels” of the Pāñcarātra scriptural canon were actually only considered as such by a minority of Pāñcarātrikas, and that this tradition arose much later than is commonly supposed. In Chapter Two I undertake a historical survey of the different groups within the Pāñcarātra as they are presented in the textual sources. In Chapter Three I argue that the tradition of the “three jewels” emerged within one of these groups, and that its eventual acceptance by other Pāñcarātrikas coincided with a decline in the “sectarianism” which had characterised relations between two Pāñcarātra traditions in particular. One of the outcomes of this decline, I argue, was the integration of previously distinct Pāñcarātrika identities, and the formation of the Pāñcarātra scriptural canon. In Chapters Four and Five I undertake a closer historical analysis of these two major South Indian Pāñcarātra traditions, focussing especially on the ways in which they sought to establish their legitimacy through being connected with texts which were situated outside of the Pāñcarātra scriptural corpus. As I show in a comparative study in Chapter Six, such strategies were also used by other Pāñcarātrikas who appealed to the authority of the Nārāyaṇīya section of the Mahābhārata. In Chapter Seven, I study the emergence of a distinct ‘Pañcarātra’ identity in this text, and argue for its dependence on the appropriation and synthesis of other religious identities. In Chapters Eight and Nine, I address the merging of Pāñcarātrika identities in South India nearly a millennium later. Here I argue that we are now in a better position to explain the decline of the sectarian culture which had dominated certain South Indian Pāñcarātra contexts, and the question of why one of the two major South Indian Pāñcarātra traditions appears to have disappeared. 3 4 Contents Introduction i.) General introduction to the Pāñcarātra and previous scholarship thereon 9 ii.) The role of scripture in the Pāñcarātra Saṃhitās 13 iii.) Sources and methods 24 PART ONE THE THREE JEWELS AND THE FORMATION OF THE PĀÑCARĀTRA CANON Introduction 27 1. The Three Jewels (ratnatraya) i.) The Jayākhyasaṃhitā, the Sātvatasaṃhitā and the Pauṣkarasaṃhitā 29 ii.) The three jewels 32 iii.) Conclusions 44 2. Divisions within the Pāñcarātra i.) Different kinds of Pāñcarātrika 47 ii.) Distinct Pāñcarātrika identities in the Āgamaprāmāṇya 63 iii.) The four Pāñcarātra Siddhāntas according to the Pādmasaṃhitā 69 iv.) Conclusions 76 3. The Formation of the Pāñcarātra Canon i.) Classifications of scripture in the PārS and the PādS 79 ii.) Appropriation and unification in the late Saṃhitās 90 iii.) Conclusions 103 5 PART TWO THE ORIGINAL TEACHING: LOCATING TEXTS AND TRADITIONS Introduction 107 4. The Pāñcarātra and the Veda i.) Vedamūlatva 111 ii.) “Vedification” in the South Indian Pāñcarātra 120 iii.) Conclusions 131 5. The Ekāyanaveda i.) Descriptions of the Ekāyanaveda in the South Indian Literature 133 ii.) The term ekāyana and its earlier uses 136 iii.) The Ekāyanas in the JS, SS and PauṣS 141 iv.) Conclusions 151 6. The Pāñcarātra Teaching and the Authority of the Nārāyaṇīya i.) The Nārāyaṇīya in the transmission of the teaching (śāstrāvataraṇa) 153 ii.) The original teaching according to the Ahirbudhnyasaṃhitā 155 iii.) Syncretism and the five teachings 162 iv.) Conclusions 174 PART THREE MERGING IDENTITIES: INTEGRATING TRADITIONS Introduction 177 7. The Ekāntins in the Nārāyaṇīya i.) Setting the scene 179 ii.) The terms ekānta, ekāntin etc 182 iii.) Sectarianism, syncretism, and the religious identity of the Ekāntins in Part B 192 6 iv.) Conclusions 204 8. The Ekāntins in the Pāñcarātra Literature i.) The terms ekānta and ekāntin in the Pāñcarātra scriptures 207 iii.) Becoming Ekāntin in South India 215 iii.) Conclusions 226 9. The Āgamasiddhānta in the Pāñcarātrarakṣā i.) What became of the Āgamasiddhāntins?: A short summary 229 ii.) Vedāntadeśika’s Defence of the Āgamasiddhānta 231 iii.) Conclusions 238 Conclusions 241 Abbreviations 245 References 247 Acknowledgements 261 7 8 Introduction i.) General introduction to the Pāñcarātra and previous scholarship thereon ‘Pañcarātra’ or ‘Pāñcarātra’ is the name of a religious tradition which worships Viṣṇu, or a deity assimilated to Viṣṇu (especially Nārāyaṇa or Vāsudeva), as the highest god. The names pañcarātra/pāñcarātra are also used to refer to the large scriptural corpus consisting of anonymously authored works in Sanskrit, ordinarily called saṃhitā (“compendium”), that were produced by the followers of this tradition. Although the individual Saṃhitās cannot be dated with any precision, most of them appear to have been composed between the ninth and the fourteenth century of the Common Era. The earliest of the extant works were very probably written in North India, in and around Kashmir. The majority of the published works, however, are products of South India, and the period c. 1100-1400 CE. The Saṃhitās are written, for the most part, in the same metre as the Sanskrit epics and much Classical Sanskrit poetry, namely the 32- syllable anuṣṭubh śloka. They are structured in the form of a dialogue, normally between sages or between a sage and god, in which one interlocutor instructs another in matters relating to the initiation rites by which one becomes a member of the tradition, the preparation for and performance of the post-initiatory worship of Viṣṇu, the rewards that can accrue from such worship, and various theological and cosmological topics. As is attested in the earliest textual sources which refer to the Pāñcarātra, including the Nārāyaṇīya section of the Mahābhārata, a seventh century stele inscription from Baset in Cambodia (K. 447), Śaṅkara’s Brahmasūtrabhāṣya (on sūtra 2.2.42), and the earlier Pāñcarātra Saṃhitās themselves, pañcarātra (i.e. with a short first a) is the older of the two names. The derived term pāñcarātra, meaning “pertaining to or belonging to the Pañcarātra”, is occasionally used to refer to the followers of the tradition (see e.g. Kumārila’s Tantravārttika,1 and Rāmakaṇṭha’s 1 On sūtra 1.3.4 (328.16-17), Kumārila mentions “the treatises [which are a mixture] of dharma and adharma [that are] accepted by the Sāṃkhyas, Yogas, Pāñcarātras, Pāśupatas, Buddhists and Jains” (sāṃkhyayogapāñcarātrapāśupataśākya[nir]granthaparigṛhītadharmādharmanibandhanāni). 9 Nareśvaraparīkṣāprakāśa 87.22ff), though these are far more commonly called pāñcarātrika or, less often, pāñcarātrin. In the later South Indian literature, however, pāñcarātra became an increasingly common way to refer to the tradition itself. This convention has continued down to modern times, and pāñcarātra is now the standard name for the tradition in scholarly literature. Accordingly, and in spite of its being frequently anachronistic, in the following I refer to the tradition as “Pāñcarātra” unless I am referring directly to a textual passage which uses the earlier designation.2 The origins of the name are mysterious, and its original meaning has been subject to a wide variety of interpretations, both within the scriptural literature (see Smith 1980: 56-7), and among modern Indological studies (e.g. Schrader 1916: 24-6, van Buitenen 1962, Raghavan 1965, Neevel 1977: 8-10, Matsubara 1994: 123-27, Hudson 2002: 158-59), though none of these is wholly convincing. The description of the Pāñcarātra as a “religious tradition” is itself not unproblematic. I refer here not so much to the qualifier “religious” which, as has been sufficiently demonstrated by a number of scholars (e.g. Halbfass 1988: 310-48, Hacker 1995), has no precise equivalent in Sanskrit, but rather to the term “tradition”. There are, indeed, a number of Sanskrit words which can be reasonably translated as “tradition” in this sense (e.g. āgama, āmnāya, paramparā, pāramparya, sampradāya), though in fact among these only āgama is regularly employed as a term of self- description by the authors of the Saṃhitās, principally to designate the scriptural corpus of the Pāñcarātra or a particular work within it. More commonly, the Pāñcarātra is characterised in its own literature as a teaching (upaniṣad, śāstra), a body of knowledge (jñāna), a system (tantra), a path (mārga), or a set of injunctions (vidhi, vidhāna). It is worth pointing out that while the noun tantra is frequently applied to the Pāñcarātra in the Saṃhitās, these texts rarely use the derived adjective tāntrika (“Tantric”, i.e. pertaining to the Tantra/s) when referring to their own rituals or adherents. In contrast, when the Pāñcarātra is characterised by outsiders, whether by its religious rivals (see e.g.